This invention relates to game history preservation for gaming machines such as slot machines and video poker machines, as well as gaming applications operating in distributed computing and network environments such as the Internet. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods of capturing game screen information and critical game information for game history preservation.
As technology in the gaming industry progresses, the traditional mechanically driven reel slot machines are being replaced with electronic counterparts having CRT, LCD video displays or the like. These video/electronic gaming advancements enable the operation of more complex games, which would not otherwise be possible on mechanical-driven gaming machines. Gaming machines such as video slot machines and video poker machines are becoming increasingly popular. Part of the reason for their increased popularity is the nearly endless variety of games that can be implemented on gaming machines utilizing advanced electronic technology.
There are a wide variety of associated devices that can be connected to video gaming machines such as a video slot machines and video poker machines. Some examples of these devices are lights, ticket printers, card readers, speakers, bill validators, ticket readers, coin acceptors, display panels, key pads, coin hoppers and button pads. Many of these devices are built into the gaming machine or components associated with the gaming machine such as a top box which usually sits on top of the gaming machine.
Typically, utilizing a master gaming controller, the gaming machine controls various combinations of devices that allow a player to play a game on the gaming machine and also encourage game play on the gaming machine. For example, a game played on a gaming machine usually requires a player to input money or indicia of credit into the gaming machine, indicate a wager amount, and initiate a game play. These steps require the gaming machine to control input devices, including bill validators and coin acceptors, to accept money into the gaming machine and recognize user inputs from devices, including key pads and button pads, to determine the wager amount and initiate game play. After game play has been initiated, the gaming machine determines a game outcome, presents the game outcome to the player and may dispense an award of some type depending on the outcome of the game.
For gaming machines, an important function is the ability to store and re-display historical game play information. The game history provided by the game history information assists in settling disputes concerning the results of game play. A dispute may occur, for instance, when a player believes an award for a game outcome was not properly credited to him by the gaming machine. The dispute may arise for a number of reasons including a malfunction of the gaming machine, a power outage causing the gaming machine to reinitialize itself and a misinterpretation of the game outcome by the player. In the case of a dispute, an attendant typically arrives at the gaming machine and places the gaming machine in a game history mode. In the game history mode, important game history information about the game in dispute can be retrieved from a non-volatile storage on the gaming machine and displayed in some manner to a display on the gaming machine. The game history information is used to reconcile the dispute.
On video gaming machines such as video poker games or video slot games, a visual display of the game history typically has been used to settle such disputes. The visual display of the game history helps the game player disputing the results on the gaming machine to recall the actual results. Usually, only a subset of the game history is played backed and not the entire game. For example, for a video poker game, the visual display of information might include a graphical presentation of the initial cards dealt to the player, a graphical presentation of the cards drawn and a graphical presentation of the final hand. After the attendant and player visually review these results, the dispute may be settled.
The recall of the graphical presentation for game history playback has traditionally been achieved by retrieving critical game data from the non-volatile memory on the gaming machine and recreating an approximation of the graphical game presentation using a subset of the game code. For each game played on the gaming machine, critical game data stored in non-volatile storage may include the number of credits on the gaming machine when the game was initiated, the wager amount on the game, the paytable used to calculate the game outcome, the game outcome, image positioning information and any other information needed to recreate the visual game history. Often because of storage limitations of the non-volatile memory, a graphical presentation corresponding to the actual game play cannot be identically recreated and only a few specially selected visual portions of the game presentation are regenerated.
Now that gaming systems are becoming more powerful with enhanced graphical presentation capabilities, traditional methods of game history recreation are becoming more difficult to implement. Since the history playback is a recreation of the actual game play, many parts of the actual game code must be subsumed into a history playback code of some type to enable this function. Many newer game systems use graphical generation schemes employing mass storage devices that utilize varied load times and stream-able media formats to generate a game presentation. With these game systems, for efficiency, many game scenes are generated during the game play using 3-dimensional rendering and video playback capabilities where the exact final positioning/timing information of the game scenes are complex and not saved. The complex nature of the positioning/timing of modern graphical game presentations makes if difficult to store in a space limited non-volatile storage device. In addition, even if the information necessary to recreate the game presentation was recorded, the process to recreate the game presentation is very complex, time consuming and costly to re-engineer in a form different from the original game code.
At present, for any game with a unique game presentation, a unique history playback code is developed to recreate a visual display of the game history. For instance, for a first type of video slot game, a second type of video slot game with a game presentation different from the first video slot game and a video poker game, three distinct history play back codes are required. After development, the three playback codes must be separately approved by each gaming jurisdiction. The playback code development process and the playback code approval process are significant costs in the design of a new gaming machine.
The popularity of gaming on the Internet has also seen a dramatic increase in recent years. This includes gaming in which wagering on the outcomes of games of chance is facilitated. The need for outcome verification and validation in this setting is at least as great as for conventional gaming environments. However, conventional approaches to meeting this need suffer from many of the same drawbacks discussed above.
In view of the above, it would be desirable to provide method and apparatus that simplify the game history capture and playback process for game history preservation in a variety of gaming system environments.